SAN FRANCISCO / Tenderloin's 'Guardian Angel' prepares to spread her wings / Homeless shelter head departs to start a family

Published 4:00 am, Sunday, June 11, 2006

Photo: Brant Ward

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Shelly Roder breaks down and cries as she speaks to the men at the St. Boniface shelter which the city announced it is closing down. She urges the men to work with city outreach workers who will attempt to find them a new home.
Since 2001 Shelly Roder has been helping the hungry and homeless in San Francisco. But now she and her husband Joe Halaiko are leaving the Bay Area because of the high cost of living. The city is losing a real advocate for the unfortunate. Her latest project has been trying to find homes for the men who lived at the St.Boniface shelter on Golden Gate Avenue which the city shut down.
{Brant Ward/The Chronicle} 2/28/06 MANDATORY CREDIT FOR PHOTOGRAPHER AND SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE/ -MAGS OUT less

stboniface001_ward.jpg
Shelly Roder breaks down and cries as she speaks to the men at the St. Boniface shelter which the city announced it is closing down. She urges the men to work with city outreach workers ... more

Photo: Brant Ward

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stboniface002_ward.jpg
On moving day at St. Boniface shelter, the residents line up to move to a temporary location, while Shelly, right, works to finish packing up.
Since 2001 Shelly Roder has been helping the hungry and homeless in San Francisco. But now she and her husband Joe Halaiko are leaving the Bay Area because of the high cost of living. The city is losing a real advocate for the unfortunate. Her latest project has been trying to find homes for the men who lived at the St.Boniface shelter on Golden Gate Avenue which the city shut down.
{Brant Ward/The Chronicle} 4/6/06 MANDATORY CREDIT FOR PHOTOGRAPHER AND SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE/ -MAGS OUT less

stboniface002_ward.jpg
On moving day at St. Boniface shelter, the residents line up to move to a temporary location, while Shelly, right, works to finish packing up.
Since 2001 Shelly Roder has been helping ... more

Photo: Brant Ward

SAN FRANCISCO / Tenderloin's 'Guardian Angel' prepares to spread her wings / Homeless shelter head departs to start a family

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Holding the hands of men crying on the sidewalk. Covering shivering street people as they sleep in her church's pews. Making a dozen phone calls to find someone a drug-rehabilitation program or open shelter bed.

Such are the tasks that have filled Shelly Roder's days for the past five years as executive director of the St. Boniface Church homeless shelter and Gubbio Project, which lets exhausted street wanderers sleep in the church's pews during the day. She's become so effective -- and beloved -- street people call her the "Guardian Angel of the Tenderloin."

That's about to end.

Roder, 29, is quitting Thursday and moving to the Midwest to start a family. Like many who work in San Francisco's nonprofit homeless-services sector, she finds her pay too low -- as executive director of St. Boniface's homeless programs, she makes $38,000 a year -- and the workload too heavy to devote time to the children she and her husband, Joe Halaiko, hope to have soon.

The hundreds of homeless people who depend on her smile every day are already starting to mourn.

"You've got your people who run programs, and your counselors and your good-hearted types trying to help us out here -- and then you have Shelly," said Rolf Stolte, 52, who has lived on the street for a decade and comes to the church most days for solace. "Shelly's the reason a lot of us bums are still around. I'd be dead without her."

Roder blushed, the first sign that day of any uncertainty on her face, which usually displays a combination of steel and compassion that is unusual for one so young. The two were standing on a recent morning outside St. Boniface on Golden Gate Avenue, and she was making the latest of many arguments to try to persuade Stolte to stop sleeping in the Greyhound bus station and move into a city homeless housing program.

"Oh, c'mon, you do OK without me," Roder said. "We just need to get you inside."

"That's Shelly, always trying, huh?" Stolte said with a laugh. "She knows I don't want to sleep inside, but that's who she is -- she's the Guardian Angel of the Tenderloin."

"Yeah, maybe of the 100 block of Golden Gate," Roder shot back, blush deepening. Two other homeless men standing nearby and listening to the exchange shook their heads.

"Man, are we going to miss you," one said, voice catching.

Roder has been a constant presence in the local world of nonprofit homeless service agencies since moving to San Francisco from Milwaukee in 2001 to help run Northern California affairs for the national Jesuit Volunteer Corps, which helps the needy. She had a bachelor's degree in theology and already had under her belt a year's experience running a welfare-case community center, which had come after a year of working with the impoverished in the Dominican Republic.

Then-pastor Louis Vitale of St. Boniface thought she was mature beyond her years, so he recruited her to turn the church's 80-bed winter homeless shelter into a year-round operation. Three years later, in 2004, she helped him start the Gubbio Project, which lets homeless people who have wandered the streets all night -- or who have been shooed out of shelters, many of which shut during the day -- go to sleep in the back pews of the church during the day. This oasis for the weary is apparently the only program of its kind in the nation.

"I saw right away that she had a wonderful way of relating to homeless people on the street," said Vitale, who retired as pastor in November. "I could tell she was also bold and intelligent enough to speak truth to power."

That quality was put to the test this winter when the St. Boniface shelter had to move from its aging building -- across Golden Gate from the church -- because the owner plans to tear the building down. Officials at the city Department of Human Services, which funds the shelter, want to use the $300,000 annual budget to provide permanent housing instead, in keeping with the city's emphasis on longer-term solutions for homelessness. But Roder's urgent pleas to them and before the Board of Supervisors persuaded the department to move 20 of the residents to a temporary new building. Other arrangements were made for the rest as the church's shelter closed in April -- and while Roder and interim shelter director Michele Thorson look for a new spot at which to reopen.

"A lot of people want to close shelters so we can all do housing instead, and I really do like the idea of housing -- but just one solution doesn't fit everyone," Roder said. "For some people, there is a very dignified existence that can be found in a communal situation like a shelter, or a group living place, and we shouldn't ignore that." City officials say they are still open to discussing the subject.

The St. Boniface shelter is known throughout homeless-service circles as one of the most intimate, close-knit in town. The reason for that is Roder.

"She treats us like family," said "Stormin' " Norman DePover, 50, a two-year resident of the shelter. "She gets tough when she has to, but she really loves us."

That passion, however, couldn't trump Roder's own needs in the end.

"We've got family in Milwaukee, and we can't imagine ever being able to afford a house here," Roder said. "I mean, we went back there and found a three-bedroom house we really liked for $164,000. That's just unheard of."

Still, she said, she wishes she never had to leave.

"Just look at these people all around us -- they are amazing," Roder said, waving her hands at the lines of homeless people trudging in and out of the church. "They have taught me a lot about making the best of a bad situation, that people do care about each other despite the dirt and despair.

"I'll take that with me forever."

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